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First for the Fire Department: A Black Female Lieutenant

In a department composed overwhelmingly of white men, few things are as rare as a black female New York firefighter. There are six of them, or about 0.06 percent of the force.

The only thing rarer has been a black female fire officer. There never had been one until yesterday. Now there is one. Her name is Ella McNair, and though 19 other names were called at the promotion ceremony at the Fire Department's headquarters in Brooklyn, none drew louder whoops from the audience, and no lieutenant wore a bigger smile beneath a new navy-blue cap.

Lieutenant McNair's ascension comes at a time when the department is struggling to hire more women and minority members and to fill some of the void left by the loss of 343 firefighters on Sept. 11. Just before the lieutenants were sworn in, Douglas H. White, who is also black, took the oath as deputy commissioner for administration. His job includes taking charge of recruiting, a task that will be made somewhat easier by Lieutenant McNair's presence.

''I think she's a tremendous symbol,'' Mr. White said. ''It would be a great face for posters.''

Firefighter McNair, 5 feet 6 inches and 155 pounds of perseverance, was a member of the first class of firefighters to include women, in 1982.

''This job started off really good, and today I say the same thing,'' she said. ''It's wonderful.''

In between, though, and for that matter before she was hired, things were often tough. It took a federal court order to get the department to hire women at all, and the first recruits were not warmly welcomed.

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One day early on, Firefighter McNair found a news clipping she considered derogatory to female firefighters on the firehouse wall, and when she started using a knife to remove it, a colleague tried to grab the knife away. She ended up with a badly cut finger, and he was fined $15,000, suspended and transferred. At least five other members of her engine company were transferred involuntarily because of incidents involving her.

In 1988, Firefighter McNair resigned -- all she would say about it yesterday was that she was ''overwhelmed with what was going on with the job'' -- but she came back two years later. She has worked at Engine Company 283 in Brownsville, Brooklyn, since 1992.

Lieutenant McNair, who grew up and still lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant and said she was in her mid-40's, turned to firefighting in her early 20's, she said, because she felt bored.

Saying ''there's no sense in being content with where I'm at,'' she said she was preparing to take the captain's exam.